A Conversation with the Publicity Hound, Joan Stewart by Melanie O’Kane

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A Conversation with the Publicity Hound, Joan Stewart

Melanie O’Kane: Please tell us about your background (your story in a nutshell).

Joan Stewart: I have being working as a newspaper reporter and editor for 22 years already and retired from the media in 1994 to design my own business. My experience granted me a profound base from which to give lessons for other Publicity Hounds.

Melanie O’Kane: In your experience, what kinds of small-business publicity crusades get outcomes and what types do not get them?

Joan Stewart: Those that get publicity: Crusades in which the business directors’ message conforms entirely with the wishes and demands of the audience that is listening, seeing or reading about it. Propose lots of free recommendations to general concerns. Speak about your business problems and what you have got to know from them. Be willing to exchange brands in your industry with your media connections and bloggers.

Crusades that do not operate: Those that clang like free sponsored television with the business directors suggesting nothing of substance.

Melanie O’Kane: How can a little factual assistant facility “win” in the world of corporate competitors with greater advertising expenditures?

Joan Stewart: Be diserable to speak about how VAs are the decision to a business headmen’s problems. Also, don’t make a concetration so much on what you operate (publish articles to article directory sites, store the customer’s schedule, keep in balance the customer’s checkbook, etc.) In exchange for, stress the emphasis on how you assist them (get rid off their time-demanding dirty work, make them free to take a holiday or operate a shorter day, give them time to make a concentration on well-educated new streams of earnings). Put it otherwise, make a concentration on the profits, not things.

Melanie O’Kane: What is the best way to ground one’s business as the “local specialist” in any presented vocational field?

Joan Stewart: Improve your Web site in accordance to your location. For example, if you’re a VA in Dallas, you’ll desire the main words “Dallas VA” in a exemplary location on your Web site. Since VAs can operate for customers on the other side of the world, about the only time you’d have to be anxious about being the “local specialist” is if you wish to receive media advertence. If that’s the case, begin constructing strong relations with local media people or with bloggers who make blogs about your city. As a result we may take My Canadian Pharmacy as an active Internet helper for people providing them with well-qualified drugs for any taste and budget. Moreover they have useful, informative articles to read and broaden the mind.

Also, another strong way is to be involved into the management channel and speak about VAs in general and how they can assist small businesses. There are possibly dozens of business agencies (e.g., Rotary, Jaycees) in every society, and all are searching for good lunch and dinner speakers. Join Toastmasters in your society, and it will make you more comfortable talking to agencies.

Melanie O’Kane: Ratable to composing media releases, what is the best way to change from “indecent self-advertisement” to a perfect “newsworthy” spin?

Joan Stewart: Subscribe for my free e-mail tutorial, “89 Ways to Write Powerful Media Releases” and learn with the course till the end. It will show you step-by-step facts through the initial procedures and exhibit you perfect examples of terrific media releases.

Melanie O’Kane: Being a newspaper editor, what was the most general mistake you would observe ceating small businesses when attempting to advertise their appropriate businesses?

Joan Stewart: Naming and constructing their businesses for a story but suggesting no newsworthy event or standpoint; they simply wished to create a story about their businesses.

Melanie O’Kane: What are the best formations of paid marketing for small businesses on a reduced budget?

Joan Stewart: I am a strict believer that in most occasions, small businesses with reduced budgets do not demand paid marketing. But they must advertise strenuously in other ways and utilize free advertisement to elaborate a noise about their businesses. Also, carry out cooperative marketing business engagements with other small-business leaders who you do not contend with, but who have the goals the same as yours.

Melanie O’Kane: Do “trash and trinket” promotional points like attractors, pens and coffee mugs really are useful to run new business?

Joan Stewart: I don’t think so. They assist in a product description crusades by reserving your name in front of people. But creating relationships with perspective customers and word-of-mouth directions are the best ways to start for a new business.

Melanie O’Kane: Is any advertisement good advertisement?

Joan Stewart: Bad advertisement is not good advertisement, which is what business persons might understand wishing to say “no comment.” If you ever got to know that the media are creating a story about you, and it isn’t perfect, you should always leave comments. If you don’t, you’re conceding all power to take the message under control.

Melanie O’Kane: Generallly, do you have a belief the business world has concentrated on to the conception of utilization of factual assistant services?

Joan Stewart: Together with the advice I mentioned above about small businesses winning in the world of competitors with greater budgets, I also would say:

Design a good Web site combined with free, useful information for your dedicated team; and

Unite the Better Business Bureau and place their logo on your home page.

Melanie O’Kane: What are the three key advertising strategies for a prosperous online advertising crusades?

Joan Stewart: There are a lot of them. Here are the four most effective and efficient:

A Web site combined with free content and improved for the search engines,

A blog to reduce traffic,

Articles published to article linking sites like EzineArticles.com, and

Media releases spreaded constantly online through services like PRWeb or Expertclick.com: The Online Yearbook of Experts.

Melanie O’Kane: How can factual assistants use to advantage on high-ranking advertising they have already taken?

Joan Stewart: Even before your advertising crusade starts, begin covering e-mail addresses at your Web site so you can sell to your attendants over and over again, until they claim “stop,” and without bulk mail-out.

Melanie O’Kane: What are the most preferable resources for small-business market investigation

Joan Stewart: The Internet. It can make you busy investigating for years, and it’s chargeless.

Melanie O’Kane: What necessary essential points can you show us about having an approach to newspaper and magazine editors with stories about a factual assistant business?

Joan Stewart: In June I did an initial weekly training session (11 hours in all) known as “How to Help Your Boss or Client with a Publicity Campaign.” It’s as a matter of fact a graduate-level class for VAs and helpers on how to make advertising for their chefs, customers or themselves. It explains every fact of how to test not only conventional media, but bloggers as well. And it shows how to design a large presence for yourself online. You can know more about it on my Web site.

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Melanie O’Kane is President of MAD Typing and Consulting, a factual helper company grounded in Madison, Wisconsin, that supplies executive, creative and business writing services to customers all over the United States. O’Kane is a 20-year executive employer and prosperous e-book author and columnist. Get to know more about Melanie O’Kane and MAD Typing and Consulting by following the link http://www.mad-typing-and-consulting.com.